Thanks A-Team for the Japanese perspective. If a picture says a thousand words, then that animation says a million. Having said that, the Neven Acropolis Memorial Polynya is showing at 140 E, 84 N on ASRM2 for May 30th. http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/arctic_AMSR2_nic.png Cheers!

Hooray! Terry used the 2050 NOAA jpeg I sent him in his presentation :)

574 GT of ice is about 637 km3 out of the 2,850,000 km3 of the total ice sheet. If this became the norm then Greenland alone would contribute 1.6 mm every year to GSL. That would mean a one inch rise every 16 years just from Greenland. Or 7 meters from the whole ice sheet.

3.85 million km2 +- 0.89 ...here's how: I took the September averages from 2000-2012 and plotted a trend line. Doing the monthly averages gave me a smaller SD then just listing the minimums.Then I derived the average deviation of the means from the minimums and subtracted it from the projected 2013 monthly mean.

"Not here in Austria, not in the Netherlands where I was born and bred, not in Germany where I lived for two years, not in Croatia where my roots lie." Neven, I had assumed you were Dutch all this time. I had no idea you are Croatian.

The number I've been reading from multiple sources (mostly linked though this blog) is that the arctic has been loosing 900 km3 per year according to Godiva 2. If that continues from the September 2012 volume of 3400 km3; it means a completely ice free arctic ocean in the (early) summer of 2016. I didn't want to believe the sea ice decline was exponential back in 2010, but I guess I'm left with no choice at this point!

It's not just the bacteria lowering the ice's albedo that will cause melt. They produce heat and their waste inhibits ice crystallization. Also, some bacteria have polypeptides which inhibit ice crystal to form both within them and on their cell walls. http://mic.sgmjournals.org/content/150/1/171.full.pdf I would image that the additional melt factors I have mentioned are not as great as the lowering of albedo. But even an additional +1mm/year contribution to ocean levels would be significant in the long run.

A question to my fellow bloggers: I just found out that I am a "Warmist" and have no idea whatsoever how to conduct myself. According to Karl I am supposed to be spreading something called "propaganda". I have no idea what that is. Is it some kind of fertilizer? As for Karl's doctoral thesis, I would guess it involves the very high positive correlation between people who interrupt other people's serious decisions while drapped in the anominity the internet provides; with people sufering from microphallus.

Yahoo put this AP article about the NSIDC SIE minimum on their headline banner (will be bumped down to the "science" section very soon). http://news.yahoo.com/arctic-ice-shrinks-time-low-half-1980-size-175242723.html It's not very well written and kind of a rush job but it is mainstream attention. Just don't read the comments section... under any circumstances (seriously)

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the NSIDC is going to call this years minimum SIE on 9/20 or 9/21 with a 5 day rolling mean of 3.40 million km2. Taking all bets folks!

It didn't occur to me until today that there is open ocean a little over 200 miles from the north pole. For frame of reference (Midwest style) that's the distance from the loop in Chicago to the state capitol building in Springfield IL. or The distance from London to Paris as the crow flies :)

Rob, Not only is NSIDC SIE still decreasing, but the anomaly hit a milestone recently. On 9/15 & 9/16 the anomaly was larger than extent. 9/15/2012: 3.39324, -3.42178 9/16/2012: 3.36855, -3.40948 CT SIA reached this particular milestone on 9/1 and has maintained it for 2 weeks now. I think we are in for anomalies of -2.6 million km2 for SIA and maybe -3.5 or even -3.6 million km2 for SIE by the end of September. Anyone have thoughts on this matter?

Hey Neven, Bastardi used your profile picture in the article. http://patriotpost.us/opinion/14736 The link reads "Here is a picture of a submarine surfacing at the North Pole". What literary flair he has! BTW Neven, what is the significance of your profile picture?

MODIS composite for 9/4 to 9/11 http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/MODISCOM-F/20120910000000_MODISCOM-F_0006643754.jpg Even the ice north of 85N looks terrible. Now look at all the fissures in the thick multi year ice north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r03c03.2012255.terra http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c03.2012255.terra And this is supposed to be the tough ice that anchors the CAB to Greenland and the C Archipelago. Is the overall ice cover so thin that sheering forces from currents are dislodging the CAB!? Anyway, many of the previous posts are questioning whether minimums have been reached yet. I don't think we can call the melt season over yet. NSIDC SIE and CT SIA have both had upticks. Both had increases of over 80K on 9/7 but are going down again, sending SIE down to over 700K past the 2007 minimum record. I have not observed the October/November refreezes in the past, because I found it dull. I certainly plan to do so this year, because it will be anything but dull!

Neven, A bit off topic, but congratulations for going from 91 followers to 131 followers in just 2 months. That is over a 40% increase!!! A statistic to be proud of. You have created a place for people concerned about (and actively studying) arctic sea ice from novice to ret. climate scientist to get together and share what is on their minds. Well done sir!

MASIE hit 4.1 million km2 http://nsidc.org/data/masie/index.html Around August 20th, Goddard compared the current MASIE ice map to the NSIDC SIE 2007 minimum map (what a b-hole) and stated "With over 700,000 kms left to go, this years minimum reaching the 2007 minimum is impossible". His site is now reduced to only showing the IMS map which is still being compared to the NSIDC SIE 2007. It's only a matter of time till they start stating the old numbers in square miles and the new ones in square kilometers to make them look bigger.

It looks like I picked the right category for CT SIA minimum of "under 2.6 million km2" seeing as how its almost there with over 2 weeks of melt left. I've been guessing since the beginning of Aug a minimum of (from a stats standpoint) 2.25 million km2 +/- 150K km2. The high end of my estimate at 2.4 million seems more correct. As for NSIDC SIE, I guessed 4.0 to 3.8 million km2 because the ice did not seem to be compacting so much. Looks like I will be dead wrong on this poll :) Do we have any more last minute bets as to SIA and SIE minimums ladies and gentlemen!?

Have a great vacation Neven and thank you for all you do on this blog :)

Thank you for the great link idunno. But the points I was making were: 1) Most people can't or won't see the implication of events they see transpiring. 2) Even when something is obvious with mountains of evidence supporting it, you will still have a (usually vocal) minority that refuses to accept it for esoteric reasons. Thus, with climate change being a complex entity with anomalies occurring over decades and not weeks, people can easily dismiss it.

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | August 24, 2012 at 16:56 "I'm just eyeballing a graph, and I know how inaccurate such things are, but the NSIDC graph on its front page to me looks 5 standard deviations from the mean. Maybe more." According to NSIDC records the SIE for 8/23/12 in 6.875 standard deveations from the 1979-2000 average and has been running around 7 for most of this month.

A note on denial: I live in DuPage County IL and if you check the US Drought Monitor every week (like I do), you'd see that my county in going through D1 moderate drought. It’s the little square county directly west of Cook County (Cook is the county Chicago is in). http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ We are one of the few counties not going through severe drought or worse this summer, with over 76% of the state experiencing extreme drought (D3) or worse. While not going into specifics (of which I could fill several pages), for a multitude of reasons, this drought is easily the worst ever for the agro-industrial industry and will have a much more profound effect on the WORLD economy than any other that has come before. There was a "perfect storm" of events that has nigh annihilated global corn stores. Soybeans while better off than corn are also affected and have seen prices rise steadily. Anyway, my point is that as bad as the drought is, people in the Chicago land area (and most of the country) don’t or won’t understand the impact it will have on them. They are in denial as to the drought having any consequences for them. It’ something happening to farmers far, far away. The drought has been given plenty of media coverage and is even being called “the worst drought in 50 years”. But the implications of the drought and how/why it will affect the average consumer is not talked about. People know it’s a hot summer and feel sorry for the poor farmers in other parts of the country; That’s it! This is something that’s readily apparent to the average person, is being given lots of (fluff piece) media coverage and has no politicians/corps fighting an expensive disinformation campaign against it. With all that said, I still have neighbors who think there is no drought. You can lead a horse to water…

Thank you Chapman for your reply. I didn't know that dense clouds were partially opaque to the microwave sensors.

Looking back at the Cryosphere Today SIA measurements for this year, we've not seen the "freeze backs" as Neven calls them that we have in the past few years (by now we would have normally seen 3-6 averaging 28K). In the last few years from the end of July to SIA minimum: 2011 saw 12, averaging -34K, totaling -408K. 2010 saw 10, averaging -29K, totaling -297K. 2009 saw 10, averaging -38K, totaling -382K. 2008 saw 10, averaging -20K, totaling -203K. 2007 saw 10, averaging -40K, totaling -401K. 2012 has seen only 2 of them, -13,267 & -252 which is about half that of the past 5 years. Does anyone have any ideas as to why we are not seeing the usual late season SIA "freeze back"? Was it the great arctic cyclone? Sea ice being just too thin? Modifications to the satellite or how they crunch the data?

Paul K: "The IJIS reported its third century break in a row for August 18 final number. Normally we would be noticing this kind of streak, but of course this year the abnormal has become the normal. (Just how many century breaks this month?)" Technically the decrease didn't quite make the 100K mark (92.5K), but I know what you mean. I've been counting the daily decreases in the 90s as century dips too; especially since 3 day this month alone the dips were almost 200K :) In answer to your question: 12 days this month have seen validated daily decreases of 90K or more. 8/3 108125 8/4 115468 8/5 94532 8/6 188437 8/7 170469 8/8 175312 8/10 105938 8/11 97344 8/16 102500 8/17 116407 8/18 101875 8/19 92500 101875 92500

A quick comment about multi-year sea ice. It is my opinion that the timing of this substantial drop in both SIA and SIE is due in part to the reduced survival of first year sea ice starting (in ernest) in 2007 and then every subsequent year. Thus the sudden evanescence of the 5+ year sea ice: The much harder ice that acts like an anchor or sorts, keeping the central arctic pack held fast to Greenland.